


If I Fall From Grace

by IsThereARealLife



Series: Hurts Like Heaven [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Character, Blood, Funerals, M/M, Nightmares, Violence, War, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4011601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsThereARealLife/pseuds/IsThereARealLife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming back from war is hard. Especially when you left someone behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Fall From Grace

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry
> 
> (also i have literally no idea how the army or communications or anything work, soooo… apologies for the myriad mistakes that are bound to be here)

“How many more miles, Sam?” Riley’s voice comes over the radio. He’s only a few feet away but the wind is too loud for normal speech. “Kinda hoping to get back for dinner. I’m starving.” It’s starting to get dark, technically now a night mission, even though the sun still blazes down.

Sam laughs. “Of course you are. Maybe three more, I think? Just ‘round the other side of the mountain.”

Another voice crackles over the coms. “You’ve got hostiles on the ground, at least six. We don’t know their fire-power. Keep an eye out.”

“Yes, sir,” they both reply in unison.

They’ve been back for several months and they’re been an even better team than the previous tour. The most successful team in their squadron. They steal what private moments they can in store closets and behind rarely used tents. Not much, just a kiss here or there, very occasionally something more, if there is no chance of being caught.

In public, there’s a few barely-there brushes of shoulders and hands, just a reminder that the other is there. It makes this hell bearable.

They start to round the mountain and a plume of smoke comes into view, signalling their destination. With their target in sight, their colonel back at base makes them go radio silent to remove distractions.

“Alright, Sam circle round and drop in from the south, see if we can’t pick off the hostiles,” Riley suggested.

“It’d be easier to do our actual job if we can.” Someone else might’ve said ‘let’s hope’ at the end of that sentence, but Sam has been here too long. He knows that hope is a distraction. Hope gets you killed.

“Alright man,” Riley signals that it’s almost time. “See you on the other side.”

Sam turns to look at his boyfriend, a little smile softening Riley’s features as he looks back, thinks of the little silver band tucked away in his duffel bag, that used to be his father’s.

“Let’s go.”

Sam swoops away to the right, but he can’t help a glance back to Riley as he moves off too. 

A sharp crack.

And all of a sudden Riley isn’t there anymore.

He pulls up in an instant. Where… where did he… gunshot. It was a gunshot. No…

There. There… He’s… oh God. He is frozen in place. Stuck. All he can do is watch. Even from this distance he can see the dark red stain spreading over the green uniform as he falls. But he isn’t falling yet. His wings are still out. It’s more like a terrible, slow glide towards the sand.

Another shot rings out and suddenly Riley is just plummeting straight down. They got his wing.

Now Sam can finally move again, the gunfire still ringing in his head. He dives straight towards him, no care given towards his own safety. Just Riley. Get to Riley. Save him. Save him.

God… His vision is going blurry and little pools are forming in the bottom of his goggles. He gets to the other man and grips him around the chest, slowing his descent. He should feel… But he can’t. There’s no movement. He isn’t breathing. No no no.

Almost there. They’re almost there. Not even ten metres when a third and final shot is heard. And now Sam is falling too, hard onto the stone and sand.

The sun is scorching his skin, boiling the water on his face. Sand whips into his eyes, against the bare skin, into oozing wounds. It stings. Riley. Riley is… he’s not moving. He’s not… He’s… 

It burns. Bright lights. Flashing. Screeching. Wailing. It hurts. Someone is wailing.

Wait, that’s Sam’s own voice. _Riley._ It hurts so much.

_Riley. No. Please._

_I’m here. I’m right here next to you._

_Please Riley._

“Riley…” Sam whimpers as he comes back to consciousness. His pillow is damp and his head is pounding and a phantom ache in his left arm where he landed stabs his skin like a thousand sharpened knives.

He fumbles around on his bedside table, pointedly avoiding looking at the framed picture, the silver ring. Ignores the burning of the extra dog tags round his neck.

Finally his hand lands on his phone and he punches in the speed dial.

Almost immediately, a sleepy but always soothing voice answers. “Sam?”

He can barely get the words out, his throat scorched dry. He waits so long, the person on the other end repeats, “Sam? What’s wrong?”

“Mama…”

Sam doesn’t need to say anything else. She just starts humming a familiar tune, and then the words come in, to the lullaby she used to sing to him when he was still small. He clutches tight to the chains around his neck, so tight they dig into his palm, grounding him in the too-big, too-soft bed, and let’s himself be lulled back to sleep.

It’s only been two months since he got Riley’s tags. He escorted his body back home and was given an honourable discharge. Riley’s sister, his only family, was waiting for them. He carried the coffin and read at the funeral as all other partners did for those they flew with. They gave the flag and the tags to Anne but after the service, she approached him and pressed them into his hands, saying they belonged to Sam. He wouldn’t cry. No. But he wasn’t ashamed to lean on his Mama, to hold her hand, let it ground him.

It was cloudy and overcast all day. Sam waited until all the guests had left before he even thought of moving. His Mama waited a way back, even the minister stepped away. 

He’s silent for a long while. Not knowing what to say, not being able to say goodbye. It starts to rain.

“I guess… I guess I just keep hoping this’ll all be a bad dream and… and I’m gonna wake up next to you. There won’t be another tour and we can just…”

A sharp crack of thunder shakes the cemetery. Sam immediately freezes, flashes of a body falling before his eyes. His Mama is at his side in seconds, holding his hand once more.

“I’m sorry, Riley. I’m so sorry,” he whispers, the best farewell he can manage.

He helps shovel the dirt over the coffin. He can help keep Riley safe one last time. His uniform is a mess afterwards, but the uniform is what made this mess of his life so to hell with it.

He goes home to their empty house with all the orange juice that Riley had insisted was good for them and the pictures on the fridge of their road trip across to L.A. because who doesn’t want to go to Disneyland. He chucks his uniform in a corner and pulls on soft trackpants and one of Riley’s old t-shirts. He fiddles aimlessly, and goes to bed early, only to be woken up within hours from the nightmares. Nightmares he still has, that he can’t imagine not having now. How do you watch something like that and not see it every time you close your eyes?

One day though. One day he gets through the night. And even though his first thought is still of Riley and the missing warmth next to him in the bed, he gets up. He gets up and puts on his running shoes and goes down to Washington Monument. Because he has to. Because Riley wouldn’t want him to lose everything else as well.

  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [ishita](http://www.akadefenders.tumblr.com) for beta-ing and also staying up late writing and having the most cracky conversations in the history of ever.
> 
> please kudos and comment and let me know what you think. i thrive off feedback :)
> 
> my tumblr is also [here](http://www.ismylifejustfantasy.tumblr.com)


End file.
